Yucky Spring

Spring has begun to have sprung around here. It's been around a balmy 65 the last couple of days, with sun and breeze to boot. Just gorgeous. I've shed my coat (which is a big step for me), and though I the ever-clothed am still wearing long sleeves, Jennica is down to shorts and a t-shirt and all the sorority girls are donning their super-mini skirts and tank tops (if that scrap of cloth can be called a tank top even).
This is the gross part of spring, though. All muddy, random patches of snow still surviving somehow. The wind has lots of dry, icky dirt in it that grits up your hair. You can't have dance class outside because the grass is all wet and dirty still. But I still love it, yucky and all. Tonight there's a big thunderstorm, which sounds so nice, with loud rumblings and little patterings of water. I missed rain.
In other news, spring break was great. Ithaca was tons of fun, even though we did little more than tour campus, play scrabble, and sit in the hot tub. I just like road trips, I guess, and it's always nice to hang with friends in their natural environment. Mike loved Cornell, he's going there next year, which is also a good thing. The trip home was nice too. Sam is of course cuter than ever, he can say all kinds of fun words like "buwati" (which apparently means bread) and "gaki" (which is assumed to mean any other type of food). He's got this awesome spin move, too. Family Easter was tons of fun, it's always nice to have a while to hang with the siblings. The baby boys were so good together, though never when the video camera was on. It was really great to spend time with the siblings all at once, I am noticing that every time we get together I feel less and less like the annoying youngest and more like a peer. We watched this hilarious video with Mr. T, that we all almost died laughing about. "Be somebody, or be somebody's fool." Real words to live by.
Speaking of the siblings, I've been asked to plug their sites.
Alex: www.keithatkeith.com
Steven: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=stevengrahmann
Julie/Ryan/The Journey: www.thejourneycommunity.com
Alright, I'm supposed to be writing a lab report. So much work for so little reward.

Happy Easter

Poems

I apologize for those of you out in cyberspace who could care less about my amature (and rather bad) poetry. If you don't like those entries, you can feel free to skip right over them. But I get things in my head, and they come out here. For more interesting Grahmann ramblings, hop over to keithatkeith.com, my brother's site (very amusing, and no bad poetry). For not as interesting Grahmann ramblings, stay right here, I've got plently :-)

March

Something in the air today
made the snow look out of place
flakes almost sizzle
when coming in contact with exposed skin
each direct hit a startling shock
the giant puffs disappear on impact
swallowed up without a trace
and just as quickly as it came
the flurry is suddenly over
leaving no evidence
but the grey shadow of clouds
telling us spring is almost here

Back to life

Back to reality, back to the here and the now.... (sorry, once the song starts, it's gotta keep going)

Dance 31 is now over. The concerts all went super well, no one got hurt on stage, nothing went horribly wrong, both Friday and Saturday were completely sold out (at least 20 people each night standing in the aisles). It was awesome. The performance high always erases all the stress and trouble from the week before the show, so I'm back to my old self again. We had a post-mortem with the faculty and whatever students could come last night, and it was a good opportunity to talk about what goes on in the department, what this concert really means and how it really works, and what's going to happen to it once our chair leaves (Max is retiring after this year). So overall, a very good run of a very good show.
The only problem is now I'm left with like nothing to do. I have three nights a week where I used to be at rehearsal literally all night. Now, I'm just sitting around. Sunday, I cleaned the bathroom, did all of my laundry, went shopping, did homework, and took a really long bath. It was amazing. I've still got things to do, sure, but now I have so much more time to do them. It's awesome.
Spring break is soon, which is exciting. I'm heading to Ithaca, NY with Kathleen for a couple of days, which should be good. She needed a ride home, I needed something to do, and Mike is in town visiting Cornell, so we all decided to hang out there together. Should be a good time (mostly because it's not Hope).
I sent my application in to Paul Taylor's summer intensive, complete with a really flattering recommendation from Ray Tadio (my teacher, who actually has a recognizable name in the NY dance scene). I should hear back by the end of the month (exciting!!). I'm all antsy, I want to go to this thing so badly. Ray really was encouraging about me being there, he thought I would do very well and was all overflowing with other people I should go take class from while I'm in the city. Just keeping my fingers crossed...
So I guess instead of sitting around all day like I would like to, I should write up my biochem lab or something. I suppose I'm off to do that. As my brothers would say: (while my sister yelled at them...) Have a nice life.

The Long Ride Home

So I'm in this piece for Dance 31 that's about the Civil Rights Movement. Or so Ray tells us. I guess I can see it. Really, it's 20 minutes of really intense running around and playing with chairs. It's really cool, though. The costumes are made of men's wool vests with the backs cut off (lots of skin, Ray told me he's glad my Mommy isn't coming). Our hair is supposed to be all wild and crazy. We have a coupde of rehearsals in which to practice our wild and craziness, and I had a couple of ideas. Yesterday I put all my hair in little braids and then put it in a couple of ponytails. It looked really dumb, I think. But everyone else said it was awesome, and Ray claims it's one of his favorites out of the 13 crazy hair-do's on stage. So I guess it stays. I'm glad I don't have to see anyone super important before or after the shows, because it looks downright silly in the braids, and like a lion out of them (see pictures). I know most of the people who read this are not in town, but if you're around Holland this weekend, Thursday through Saturday at 8pm, it should be an awesome show.
I really should be doing my stats homework, so I'll stop procrastinating now and get down to it.

This apparently looks awesome on stage. If only it didn't take an hour to do... 

The aftermath: Welcome to 1991.

Howard Park

Wind on my face
In my hair
Whipping my clothes
Cutting through the fabric
Pushing and shoving
Nearly toppling me over
Filling my ears
Rushing, boiling, roiling, roaring
Saying things I will never understand
Going somewhere I will never find
I want to follow it
Let it push me to its destination
Run with itFly with it
Fast and long and hard
Pick me up
Whirl me around
Blow me far away
Never stopping
Never resting
Never doubting my direction

Dance 31

Well, the faculty concert has come again. As of yesterday, we're at the theater. So I'm there every night this week. So not only do I have my normal busy-ness, but I'm locked at DeWitt all night on top of it. Fun. Oh well, I do this because I like it, right?
Other than rehearsals, life does continue. I had my first biochem lab last week, 5 hours of just kinda hangin' around. We did approximately 2 hours worth of work, then bummed around and got coffee, ate donuts, listened to NPR, talked, played with pipettes and made up stock solutions. It was great. I had my dance class conferences last week, and Ray has informed me that I am "blunt" (which is apparently a good thing, he claims we didn't get along when I was a freshman because he envies that quality in me so much), and that I should be in Aerial next year (the modern company) instead of doing InSync again. My car is still not fixed, because another couple parts were found to be broken ($$). Yet even with that breach in my responsibility, Dad has agreed to let me go to NY this summer for the Paul Taylor intensive. Absolutely amazing. I'm done with economics, and with that almost all my gen. ed. classes, which I usually hate so that's great. I got a pair of pointe shoes for free, which is totally cool and saves me $50.
Spring Break is almost here, and I only have a million things to do until then. Hopefully the weather will make up it's mind to be spring by then, and stop this every-other-day snow and 40 degrees thing. Okay, I'm out of random things to say.